CHAPTER XVI.THE DAYS WHICH FOLLOWED.
Miss Hansford had sat below listening to the splashing of water overhead, hoping Elithe would not get much on the floor, as it might come through into the kitchen, and that she would not leave the soap in the tub when she was through with her bath. She heard her next in the white room moving about, and hoped she would not slat her things around, but hang them in the closet.
“I couldn’t bear to see that room all littered up, though Elithe’s litter wouldn’t be so bad as some. I begin to like the girl and feel like a mother already,” she thought, as she listened to the steps overhead until they ceased, and she waited for Elithe to come down.
As she did not appear she finally decided that she was resting and she would not disturb her until supper was ready. Never had she taken more pains with a meal than she did that afternoon. The rolls were light; the strawberries and cream were fresh, while the custards in the blue china cups were the crowning of the feast prepared for Elithe. Why didn’t she come down, Miss Hansfordwondered as the time slipped by and she began herself to feel the pangs of hunger.
“Elithe!” she called at last at the foot of the stairs. “Elithe!” but Elithe was wrapped in oblivion to everything around her, and it would take more than a call to waken her. “I b’lieve she’s asleep,” Miss Hansford said, going up the stairs and glancing first into the bath closet. Everything was right there. The bar of soap was in the saucer on the wooden chair and the towels on the rack. Turning next to the white room, she stood for a moment in the door which jutted back a little into the hall or entry so that she could not at once see the bed and the young girl sleeping there. She could only see the confusion, which filled her with dismay. Elithe was as orderly, and more so, perhaps, than most girls.Slattingwas not her custom, and she had meant to put everything away after finishing her toilet. But sleep had overtaken her, and the whole room was bearing frightful evidence against the Potter blood. Her trunk was open, with various articles in a huddle, as she had left them when hunting for her linen. Her best dress, her second best and her gingham were on exhibition; a part of the bathing suit hung over one side of the trunk and a white apron on the other. On the floor at intervals lay her traveling clothes, boots and stockings and skirts, which she had left where she dropped them. Miss Hansford stepped over some of them and kicked others aside as she advanced into the room with stern disapproval on her face.
“I’ll give up if she hasn’t slatted in good earnest. Her mother all over!” she thought, just as her eye fell upon the figure by the bedside.
Elithe’s head was on one side, disclosing a part of her face, which was very pale, except for a red spot on hercheek. Through the window a bar of sunshine fell across her hair like a halo bringing out its golden tints and reminding Miss Hansford of a picture she once saw of the Virgin when a girl of fifteen.
“Fell asleep saying her prayers, poor, tired child!” Miss Hansford said to herself, all her discomposure at theslattedroom vanishing as she picked up the soiled articles and put them away. Then she awoke Elithe, who started to her feet suddenly, but sank back quickly upon the bed. She was not hungry, she said. She could not eat if she went down. All she wanted was to sleep, and her head fell heavily upon her breast. Miss Hansford told her of the strawberries and cream and the rolls and the custards, dwelling at length upon the latter and the cups they were baked in. Elithe could surely eat a custard if nothing else.
“No, auntie, not even a custard to-night, if it were baked in a cup five hundred years old,” Elithe said. “I can’t eat anything. I’ve had too much already. That sandwich was dreadful.”
A moment later she parted company with the stale sandwich eaten in Springfield and the lemonade taken on the boat. With her stomach thus relieved, she felt better, but begged so hard to be left alone that her aunt did not urge her further.
“Hop right into bed, and I’ll cover you up. It gets chilly here at night,” she said, turning back the sheet and shaking up the pillow.
Elithe needed no second bidding, and before her aunt left the room she was again sleeping soundly. Miss Hansford ate her supper alone, lamenting over the custards, which stood untouched in the little cups until Paul came whistling up the walk. He was on his way to see Clarice,and had called to enquire for Elithe. She had seemed so tired on the boat and on the wharf that her face had haunted him ever since, and he wished to know if she were rested.
“Hello, taking your supper alone?” he said, as he saw Miss Hansford sitting in solitary state with what he knew to be herbest things.
She welcomed him warmly, thanked him for his kindness to Elithe, who, she told him, was dead beat and had fallen asleep saying her prayers. “I couldn’t get her to eat a thing,—not even a custard, and I made ’em for her. I never touch ’em. There’s four of ’em, and I’m afraid they’ll sour unless you help me out,” she said, offering him a little blue cup.
He had just finished his dinner, but he expressed himself willing to help in the emergency, and ate the two custards intended for Elithe. He was very solicitous about her, hoping she would be quite well in the morning and saying he would come round in his cart and take her for a drive. Then he shook himself down,—a habit he had,—straightened his hat and said he must go and see Clarice.
“Elithe saw her on the boat, I b’lieve. Tell her to call,” Miss Hansford said, jerking the last words out with an effort, and hating herself for caring whether Clarice called or not.
“Of course she’ll call. We’ll come together,” Paul assured her, as he ran down the steps and hurried off to make his peace with the young lady who, he felt pretty sure, was aggrieved because he had sent Elithe home in his carriage instead of herself.
Three or four times before her usual hour for retiring, Miss Hansford went up to Elithe’s room, finding her always in the same position, her head on one side, her handscrossed upon her bosom and her face very white, except for the spots on her cheeks, which increased in size until they spread down to her neck. Her hands were hot and her head was hot, but she appeared to be sleeping quietly.
“Just tired, I guess. I’m not going to worry,” Miss Hansford thought.
But she did worry, and as soon as the first streak of dawn appeared she was dressed and in Elithe’s room again. To all appearances there had not been the slightest change of position during the night. The hands were folded just the same, the head was turned on the pillow, and the bed clothes exactly as Miss Hansford had left them.
“Elithe!” she said. “Elithe, wake up!”
But Elithe made no answer except to open her eyes for an instant and close them again wearily. Her face was crimson now, and the perspiration stood under her hair, which, with the dampness, curled closely on her forehead.
Miss Hansford had never been ill herself, and did not believe much in the ailments of other people. All they had to do was to make an effort and brace up. But Elithe baffled her. She could not get her to brace up, or wake up either, although she shook her and called her loudly by name.
“I hate a doctor like pisen, but I’ve got to have one,” she decided, and the first man who passed the house was sent in quest of one.
He was a young practitioner, new in the place, and very full of his own importance as an M. D. After asking a few questions and holding Elithe’s hand longer than Miss Hansford thought there was any need of he began to diagnose the case with so many long words that she lost her temper and exclaimed: “For the land’s sake, quit the encyclopædiaand talk common sense. What’s the matter with her?”
“Nervous exhaustion, amounting almost to nervous prostration, complicated with fever and some slight gastric derangement of the stomach, brought on by too long fasting and eating improper food. Nothing dangerous, I assure you. Nothing but what will yield readily to treatment,” was the doctor’s reply, as he stirred his two glasses of water and told how often to give it.
“What’s your price?” Miss Hansford asked, with her characteristic habit of having things “on the square.”
The doctor looked at her a moment before he replied: “Two dollars a visit.” Then he went away, saying he would come again in the afternoon.
Miss Hansford did not believe in homeopathy at all, and sniffed a good deal at the water in the tumblers and the price she was to pay for it. But she gave it religiously and watched Elithe very closely until the doctor came again. If the case was not dangerous it was certainly puzzling to him. For a few days Elithe lay in a kind of stupor, seldom moving so much as her hand or opening her eyes. The doctor with the big words and little pills was dismissed, and one called in his place from Still Haven, a second from the Basin, and a third from a hotel. One was an allopathist, another an eclectic, the third a Christian Scientist, and all fools, Miss Hansford said, dismissing them one after another as she had the homeopathist, and taking the case in her own hands. If nothing ailed Elithe but nervous exhaustion, she’d get over it without doctors, she said.
Those were very anxious days which followed when Miss Hansford stayed by Elithe night and day, except when her duties called her below. She washed Elithe’s clothes herself, finding in the pocket of the flannel dress the box withthe diamond ring in it. Once she thought to open it, but a sense of honor forbade, and she put it carefully away in the trunk from which she removed Elithe’s dresses, recognizing Lucy Potter’s wedding gown and understanding in part the sacrifice the mother had made for the daughter.
All of Miss Hansford’s acquaintances soon knew of the girl, who had come so far and was lying unconscious and helpless, and everybody was kind, especially the Ralstons. Two or three times a day Paul came to inquire how she was, bringing fruit and flowers and asking if there was anything he could do. Prayers were offered for her in the Tabernacle and the Methodist church and the Episcopal. The last was at Paul’s request, and his Amen was so fervent and loud that Clarice, who was sitting at some distance from him, heard it distinctly above the others, and shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
“Who was the person prayed for this morning? Some of your relations?” she asked Paul, as they were leaving the church together.
“Why, Miss Hansford,” he replied, in some surprise.
“Miss Hansford!” she repeated. “She must have been taken suddenly. I saw her on the street last night.”
“I mean Elithe, her niece. Don’t you know she has been very ill ever since she reached here. I have certainly mentioned it to you,” Paul said.
Clarice did know perfectly well of Elithe’s illness, and how often Paul was at the cottage, and of the fruit and flowers sent there daily, and was exceedingly annoyed. She would scorn to acknowledge it, but she was jealous of Elithe and angry with Paul for his interest in her and his democratic ideas generally. It would be her first duty to change some of them when she was his wife, but for the present she contented herself with occasional stings, whichhe either did not or would not understand. He lunched with her on the Sunday when prayers were said for Elithe, and then sat with her for an hour or two on the piazza, listening to the band and talking as young people will talk when in love with each other. And Paul was very much in love. Clarice’s pride and hauteur, which he could not appreciate, he looked upon as something she would overcome in time. To him she was always gentle and sweet, and, dazzled by the glamour of her beauty, he thought himself the most fortunate of men in having won her. In Elithe he felt a great interest, and after leaving Clarice that Sunday afternoon, he went to Miss Hansford’s cottage to inquire for her.
“Better since I sent the doctors adrift. Come up and see for yourself. She won’t know you,” Miss Hansford continued, as Paul hesitated. “She lies just the same, but seems to me there’s a change.”
The room was partly in shadow, but Paul could see the face upon the pillow, thinner and whiter than when he last saw it, but exceedingly lovely, with a faint flush where the fever stains had been and the damp rings of hair about the forehead. Her hands were folded and she seemed to be sleeping quietly.
“Poor little girl! She’s had a hard time,” Paul said aloud, as he stood looking at her.
At the sound of his voice her eyes opened suddenly, and rested upon him, with a questioning look in them. “The lemonade was so good. I wish I had some more. I am very thirsty,” she said.
Evidently she thought herself on the hot boat taking the lemonade Paul had brought her. With a cry of delight, Miss Hansford exclaimed: “Thank God! It’s the firstword she has spoken. She shall have the lemonade if it kills her!”
She was down the stairs in a moment, leaving Paul alone and standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering if he, too, ought not to go. Elithe decided for him. Lifting up her hand and reaching it towards him she said: “You are Mr. Ralston and I am Elithe. Don’t you remember?”
She was introducing herself to him, and he took her hand and kept it while he replied: “Yes, I am Paul Ralston, and you are Elithe. I am glad you are better. You have been very ill.”
“Ill!” Elithe repeated, with a startled look in her eyes, which went rapidly around the room, taking in all its appointments and their meaning. “I didn’t know I was ill. How long is it, and where is auntie?”
“Here, child,” and Miss Hansford appeared with the lemonade, finding Paul holding Elithe’s hand in one of his and smoothing her hair with the other.
He was a natural nurse, and she looked and seemed so like a child in her helplessness that he caressed her as if she were one, and held the glass to her lips while she drank eagerly. She was decidedly better, but a good deal bewildered with regard to her illness, which she could not understand.
“Don’t try to now. We’ll talk of it by and by when you are stronger,” Paul said, as he bade her good-bye and went below, followed by Miss Hansford.
During the days and nights she had watched by Elithe the little girl had crept a long ways into her heart, melting the frost of years and awakening in her all the instincts of loving motherhood.
“I never b’lieved I could care for anybody as I do forher,” she said to Paul. “Why, only think that I, an old maid of sixty-five, who never had an offer, and only now and then a beau home from spellin’ school or singin’ school, should actually feel as if I was several mothers. I don’t see through it.”
Paul laughed merrily at her idea of several mothers, and then went to telegraph the glad news to Samona that Elithe was better. This was his third telegram, for after he knew Miss Hansford’s letter telling of Elithe’s illness must have reached there, he had sent a message every day, knowing how anxious the family would be. Miss Hansford had tried not to alarm them, and had only said Elithe was worn out with the journey and sick in bed from its effects. The telegrams, “Is about the same,” or “No worse,” frightened them more than the letter, and if the prayers in Oak City for her recovery were fervent and heartfelt, they were doubly so in Samona and at Deep Gulch.
“If I ever prayed in my life I’d do so now,” one of the toughest of the miners said, wiping his eyes with his grimy hand. “I should s’pose Stokes, who has been through the mill, would go at it. Hallo, Stokes! Ain’t there a prayer for the sick in that book of yourn you read so much?” he called to Stokes, coming slowly from his cabin.
Stokes nodded, and the rough continued: “Well, you’d better say it for Miss Elithe, and lively, too. No time to fool round now.”
“I am saying it all the time,” was Stokes’s reply, as he passed on to his work.
Every day a boy was sent to Samona for news, and when at last Paul’s telegram, “She is better,” flashed across the continent and was carried to the camp a loud huzza went up from the miners, the tough leading the yell and getting drunker that night than he had ever been before in hislife by way of celebrating Elithe’s recovery. Mr. Pennington did not return from Helena for a week or more, consequently he knew nothing of Elithe’s illness until the worst was over and Paul’s telegrams came every day, signed sometimes Paul Ralston and sometimes P. R.
“He is awful good to take so much interest in Elithe, isn’t he?” Rob said to Mr. Pennington, when communicating the last telegram to him. “I wonder who he is.”
There was no reply, but Mr. Pennington’s face was dark, as he turned away with something akin to jealousy stirring in his heart and a half resolve to start at once for Oak City and assert his claim to Elithe against all the world.